Gao Questions Success Of U.s. Job Training

WASHINGTON — There is little evidence that job-training programs for welfare recipients succeed in moving poor people into the workplace, a new federal report concludes.

The General Accounting Office report, released Sunday, said the government measures the success of the welfare-to-work programs on the number of participants, rather than on the number who get jobs.

Researchers could not even determine how many people actually found employment through the JOBS program established under the 1988 Family Support Act, the last major attempt by the federal government at welfare reform.

"Some people desperately need education and training to find employment," said Gale Harris, GAO senior evaluator. "But the program was not meant for perpetual education and training. It's to prepare people for jobs."

The report, coming just weeks before Congress tackles another welfare overhaul, highlights the challenges of preparing welfare recipients for jobs. Congress is considering imposing a two-year limit on cash benefits to force more recipients to work.

All 50 states have established JOBS programs, designed to provide a broad range of education, training and employment activities. But only 11 percent of the 4 million welfare parents receiving monthly checks from 1991 through 1993 participated in the programs, said the GAO, an investigatory arm of Congress.

More than half of adult recipients are exempt from work requirements under the $1 billion annual program, mostly because they are taking care of young children, the report says. About one-quarter of those required to participate do not.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees welfare programs, called the GAO report "too negative."

The 1988 reforms "moved the welfare system from one focused on income to one that is concerned with the self-sufficiency of welfare recipients," wrote June Gibbs Brown, HHS inspector general. "States strongly support the notion that employment is the ultimate goal of the JOBS program."

The program needs to be refocused to establish links with businesses that can hire people and to work with participants on job searches, say federal researchers who interviewed state and county job training officials. Right now, the programs mostly serve the highly motivated, Harris said.